Well, here we are. The final week of Survivor 50 – one of the Survivor seasons of all time. It had a great start, up and downs in the middle, but as this train closes in on the station, it feels like it’s lost its steam. We’ve said goodbye to the most entertaining people in the cast over the course of the last couple weeks especially and are left with a Final 5 that’s a little under-baked.

By no fault of the finalists, the editors just put more effort and energy into those that were not winning this season, nor even in the finale, so I’m left like many of us a little longing for someone to really root for here. Could they not have at least given us a cliffhanger like they did with Cirie in Exile Island to give us one last delusional hope that she could still win the title? This isn’t a weekly “edit” talk, but if you’ve watched the show with your eyes and ears open even the slightest, there isn’t a lot of suspense here in what’s going to happen, and that’s sad considering this is going to be the biggest finale with the live show we’ve had since 2019.

Before I get to my final rankings and ultimate (predictable) predictions on how the final night will go down, I’ll start with a few words on the final fallen comrades who we could’ve used to bring some bright light to a pretty dim evening.

I HATED Rick Devens in S38: Edge of Extinction, and I insisted in writing to never make “Devens” a thing – and I still do – but Rick really won me over this season. He’s much better when he’s on a more even playing field and isn’t getting 90% of the talk time on the show. He brought exactly what he sought out to bring – fun and joy. His last few weeks especially were a wild ride, and when he was down, he mostly never frowned. Rick brought the kind of OH YEAH Kool-Aid Man energy a season like this needed and I’m glad he didn’t flame out early. Having him in the finale would’ve made it much more unpredictable, so for that and other reasons above, I’m sad to have had him sign off.

Everything hurts and I’m dying inside.

As a big Cirie fan, I don’t know what I was thinking having any hope of her winning this season, but that’s Cirie’s magic. She convinces you to do things you know with every fiber of your body is wrong. Especially given her larger-than-life Survivor legacy and target that puts on her, I’d stand by this being the best game she ever played. She gave me a few scares pre-merge just from her circumstances, but surviving both iterations of Cila and then having almost entire control of the time she spent at the merge even further cemented her as one of the greats.

Cirie’s downfall has always been not being able to carve a path out in those final days, but this season she had it with Ozzy – that was her ride, but then he kamikazed his way out of the game and pretty much took down Cirie with him, about the most “ride or die” she could’ve been with someone.

Otherwise, she was a smooth operator and week after week impressed with her skills of manipulation and “pros and cons” way of convincing everyone that her way was the right way. I thought she even had a chance this episode and looked to have once again pulled the wool over Jonathan’s eyes, but Rizo isn’t the brainless scarecrow Cirie needed him to be, so he made sure the tribe wasn’t about to just give Cirie the game.

I wish Cirie would’ve had her own episode and didn’t have to share the end of her 20-year Survivor journey with another player, but Cirie will always be one of the best to do it and firmly the best to never win for me. Sandra’s still the best ever (sorry Aubry) but even without a title, I consider Cirie not too far behind. She will always excite us both with her strategic command as well as colorful commentary – while this is surely the end for her on Survivor, there’s hope we can see her in the Traitors castle again one day. On that show, she is #1. And #1 always in our hearts.

So, who does that leave as #1 in Survivor 50? Here’s how I think the order will go – I’m locked in on 1/3/5 with 2/4 potentially flip flopped but anything else would be a big surprise.

I’d love to see Tiffany pull through at this point for an upset, but given she had zero story for the first month of the season, I don’t see the vision. They course-corrected after that slow start, but with her being in a 1v4 situation going into the finale, she really could’ve received a powerful underdog arc with lots of fan support. Sadly, it feels inevitable that she’s not winning, so maybe the show was scared to get our hopes up? That’s part of the fun of a finale – rooting for the underdog.

Tiffany’s played well but did have the advantage of being one of the lesser threats going into the game; still, she’s proven to be an excellent navigator and able to save herself from sinking ships when she needed to. Pending another immunity win at five, Tiffany should be voted out unanimously given she’s considered the biggest jury threat by the other four now. I assume she’ll try to pitch Aubry’s name again, but if the goal is to not let Tiffany get to 3, then the tribe won’t let her have a chance of immunity at 4, making her the first boot of the finale at 5.

Following in Cirie’s footsteps, I think Rizo is going to be a two-time fire-making loser and finish in 4th place again. I don’t believe it’s been confirmed officially whether the final four is a vote or fire, but without the show having to validate any fan voting, I’m confident they’re going to tell us we voted for fire-making. In that event, I expect Jonathan or Joe to win immunity and take each other to the end, leaving Aubry to douse Rizo’s flame in the game by building up her own. Rizo physically has no gas left in the tank after running two seasons, so he’s not winning immunity, and if Aubry wins, it’d be a no-brainer to secure Joe a seat next to her. Rizo looks to be “cooked” indeed here.

I’m still not a Rizo fan, but he’s played a good game. He could’ve easily followed Savannah’s fate and been voted out early for being a threat of the unknown, but he gave the cast enough info on his game to appear honest and genuine, and he succeeded at making bonds to carry him to the end (which was needed on the apparent days he took off trying simply to stay live by lying in the shelter). Rizo would have jury support most in Coach, Cirie, and also Dee who all could influence others which is all the more reason he should be too big of a threat for Joe, Jonathan, and Aubry to take to the end. I have a strong feeling, though, that this will not be the end for Rizo and pending the “theme” of the next returnee season, I expect to have to suffer through more “Rizgod” confessionals anytime between 51 and 60.

There is no universe in which Joe is not sitting at the end and getting 0 votes from the jury. He’ll either win his way there or be taken by the final four immunity winner – no one will want to risk losing the biggest goat of the season by putting him up in fire-making. His pitch to the jury will be quite something, and I hope the players who were especially annoyed by him like Rick and Cirie to give him all the shit he deserves for refusing to play the game this season. Emily, too, I hope can come up with a scathing review of his performance. I sound like a broken record about Joe by now – just a complete waste of space this season. He was so bad that it was admittedly campy, but it really sours the whole casting process to know other names like Rob C, Penner, Sean, and Jesse (and others we don’t know) were dropped for ... this:

The show deserves every bit of criticism for having a boring end with Joe making up 1/3 of the finalists.

For the winner, it’s a race between Jonathan and Aubry, but not a close one. Jonathan has impressively walked the walk of the talk he’s talked about playing a stronger, more strategic game than his last season. His challenge strength gave him a free pass to the merge, but while he’s landed on the bottom of a few votes, he’s always remained with his head in the game and tried to make things happen – the last few votes especially he was finally successful with taking out his targets.

While strategically solid (enough), his relationship skills are what will ultimately lose him the $2 million even though his “résumé” may have a few more items on in than Aubry. Jonathan should have Coach and Stephenie’s votes locked. I think Chrissy will lean his way but is more objective and could be convinced by Aubry’s final pitch. Everyone else ... no. Dee and Tiffany will be his most vocal critics. Ozzy feels burned and betrayed. Christian, Emily, Rick, Cirie, and Rizo will all appreciate a stronger balance of a social/strategic game, so their votes should go to Aubry. Jonathan could actually stand a better chance against Rizo, but I don’t think he sees that. My guess is he’ll see Aubry as inherently weaker because she’s a woman, but she’ll be able to talk circles around him at final tribal council and sell her 4-season story arc better.

Condragulations, Aubry – you are the winner of Survivor 50.

Aubry played this season exactly how one should have surrounded by so many big names – low key. Ironically, her contested loss to Michele who did exactly that in S32: Kaoh Rong is now not what the majority of fans wanted to see for this season. We wanted BIG and IN YOUR FACE, but it’s easy for us to say that when we aren’t the ones trying to win two million dollars.

Aubry’s story in the first half of the season disappoints me the most – the editors’ fault, not hers. She seemed just not all there/hating the people around her and her rivalry with Genevieve ended a little anticlimactically. She could’ve been brought up as this huge underdog and a “dragon slayer” of her dragon to kick off the merge, but instead she was portrayed more as side character until around the duos-boot episode.

Since then, she’s said all the right things and has gotten all the right content to tell us she deserves the win and is getting it, but it feels so “in your face” in the wrong type of way that makes going into the grand finale hardly an unpredictable thrill that a season like this deserved. Then again, what can the editors do to make us believe Joe and Jonathan can go toe to toe with Aubry in final vote? They can only work with the footage they have.

If Aubry wins, she’ll have done what she needed to get to the end and convinced the jury to give her the majority of their votes, and that’s the game. I do appreciate the show crediting some of that to Michele to, in retrospect, help squash some of the debate there over who “should have” won that season. I’m glad we’re very likely getting an old schooler win and have it tie back to a classic social game win like Michele’s, but I do hope Aubry treats Rick for doubling her prize pot here.

Survivor 50 has been fun to talk about and had me more excited than the show’s had me in a couple years, and not to sign off on a sourish note, but the latter half proved that Jeff still just can’t help but to get in the players’ way. The cast itself had the right enough formula to be an unforgettable, incredible season, but we got into the “twist of the week” territory which took me out of the fantasy. There’s some small hope they can tweak things for the 50s, but the most beneficial one would be having Jeff step out of the creative process, which we know won’t happen.

Still, I did enjoy the presence of some pre-40s folks probably all of whom we’ll have seen for the last time, and fortunately this season didn’t get dominated by new era players – just new era shenanigans. I feel like a I need a palette cleanser, so maybe this summer I’ll rewatch one of the classics. Maybe S12: Exile Island – except I won’t watch the final episode but instead tell myself that Cirie beat Danielle at fire-making and went on to win 7-0 as Survivor’s first unanimous winner.

I wish I lived in that universe.